Qlik recently released its second product, next to the well-known Qlikview solution, called Qlik Sense Desktop. Qlik Sense builds upon the foundations of Qlikview, namely a user-friendly, intuitive tool for self-service data discovery and business analytics. Qlik Sense lets you quickly create your own reports and dynamic dashboards. It further enhances the Qlik solution set in the area of Data Visualisation.

Qlik Sense lets you easily connect to a multitude of data sources, and create your own visualizations and metrics with easy drag-and-drop capabilities. Charts, tables and graphs that you create are automatically interconnected, which means that if you click on a specific part of a graph, the other graphs on the screen will automatically be updated.

Qlik Sense also allows you to easily create so-called data stories, which you can build up around a specific topic. You can easily switch between a presentation and live data discovery, making your story more compelling and interactive than ever before. It has also become much easier to share Qlik Sense applications using Qlik cloud. This cloud service allows for users to share and interact with Qlik Sense applications among users. The reports can be accessed and consumed on any platform, as it is based on HTML5, including all common mobile technologies and devices.

There may arise some justified questions regarding the difference between Qlik Sense and Qlikview. Both applications have a similar analysis engine, although the engine has been updated and rebranded as the QIX-engine for Qlik Sense with a stronger focus on column store as opposed to relational store in Qlikview. This also implies that most scripts and formulas from Qlikview will also work on Qlik Sense.

There are however some differences to be noted between the two products. Qlikview can be seen as a tool to build applications under the supervision of IT, with a well-thought data model behind. The end-user still has a lot of freedom to explore the data, but when it comes to adding visualizations the end-user is more limited. Qlik calls this "Guided Analytics”.

Qlik Sense offers much more flexibility towards the end-user in terms of creating your own visualizations and lay-out that a developer would never have known you wanted to see. You could say that Qlik Sense does not require a build and publish approach, but the end-user is now much more empowered. Furthermore it is also optimized for devices with touch-screen capability. In that sense, it is a much more modern and self-service tool as opposed to Qlikview.

element61 also offers professional services for Qlik Sense, with the same level of expertise you got to expect from us. If you would like to know more about this product or our services, please feel free to contact us.